Esquire's Authors: Chip Brown

Afterwards, You're A Genius is a spiritual book about faith you might actually enjoy.

May 30, 2008

As the world ends, as time begins again, as our psychic and spiritual accounts are all zeroed out, and as we inevitably start over as pagans, we will all do ourselves a good turn by hiring the writer Chip Brown to be our guide. For Afterwards, You're a Genius (Riverhead Books, $25), Brown's beautiful and entertaining account of his stumbling journey to enlightenment, is probably unlike any book you've read on the subject of seeking. It's a big book about faith and healing that you won't want to throw across the room.

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Brown is a generous host; he doesn't try to extract some stupid, seven-habits-of-successful-chakra-massagers lesson from his experience, and he has that rare gift of being a writer, an actual writer, a great writer. So when at the outset Brown asks, "What was this country where science left off? Where the laws of ordinary existence seemed to be suspended, and sacramentalizing crones could pinpoint the flower in a stranger's heart?" we answer that we have no idea. But we'll gladly hit the road to find out.